Microsoft's Centro Solution Aims to Boost Midmarket Infrastructure

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Redmond is setting its sights on the smaller guys with Centro, a software package under development that addresses midmarket needs for easier infrastructure management.

Microsoft Corp. is recognizing the specific needs of the midmarket with a new infrastructure software solution under development known as Centro, which will be released in 2007 as part of the "Longhorn" wave of products.

Centro is specifically tailored to address the needs of the midmarket segment, which Microsoft defines as those customers with between 25 and 500 PCs connected to the Internet.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, is expected to talk about his vision for the midmarket and the key role that Centro will play in that at the Microsoft Business Summit, being held at the Redmond campus on Wednesday, said Microsoft officials familiar with the content of his speech.

Steven VanRoekel, Microsoft's director of midmarket solutions in the Windows Server group, told eWEEK.com that Centrowhich will ship in 2007, the same timeframe as Microsoft's WindowsLonghorn Serverwill bundle together Longhorn Server, the next version of Exchange and the next generation of security technologies.

Those technologies, according to Van Roekel, include the next version of ISA Server and System Center management technologies, which includes software and patch deployment and monitoring of the desktop and server.

Centro will be made available pre-installed from Microsoft OEMs and system builders as an out-of-box solution and is expected to run on between two and three servers, though that number is not final as yet.

The software will also be made available for users to install themselves, VanRoekel said.

"We are working very hard on making sure that the installation and set up is as automated and simplified as much as possible. Once it is up and running, users will have a management experience that ties the different applications together," he said.

Citing the example of something midmarket IT managers do all the timeadding a new userVanRoekel said that today this involves going into the directory, providing a user name, password and establishing an e-mail box.

"But it does not end there, as the new user then has to be assigned to different groups, group policies established, printers mapped, applications enabled and made available to them, and then issue the user a computer and give it a domain account.

"This takes four or five different tools that are independent of one another and have no basis or relationship," VanRoekel said.

With Centro, users will be walked through all these stages via a user wizard, which will simplify and automate this process behind the scenes, reducing it to just a few steps.

"We believe the automation of these mundane tasks will greatly improve our customer's lives, give them back that lost time and help them move from being reactive to more proactive and help them push IT forward," he said.

The Centro code name is Spanish for center, and reflects the square in the middle of the town around which the whole village revolves.

"We believe that with Centro in their core infrastructure, customers are planting the foundation in their company to enable the business benefits of IT far beyond where they are today," VanRoekel said.

Microsoft is also currently talking to OEMs and evaluating the various hardware platforms on which Centro will run, especially around where hardware is likely to be in the 2007 timeframe.

"We are looking at both 32-bit and 64-bit as well as the hardware we have today. Some of the prototyping we are doing inside the company is on today's hardware and things are going pretty well," VanRoekel said.

Microsoft is also looking at a range of licensing and pricing options for Centro, based on its goal of making it "easy to consume," but no decisions have been made.

"We will do a model probably pretty similar to Small Business Server(SBS), which we consider part of the family. The solutions team also owns SBS and so you can think of this offering as a SBS, but for the midmarket," he said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft offered customers a new bundle for the midsize market at 20 percent less than the open pricing for the products.

VanRoekel said this pricing continuum would continue, "but we are still very much deciding on price and there are lots of considerations relative to price, all of which are being evaluated," he said.

VanRoekel also confirmed that Microsoft was looking at offering Software Assurance-type solutions for Centro.

The team was also working with Microsoft Capital, which allows customers to finance the purchase of hardware, software and finances.

The Redmond software giant will also, in October, announce the launch of Open Licensing Value 2.0 for the midmarket segment, which will give those customers more of the benefits of Software Assurance, including spreading payments across three years and better support, Van Roekel said.

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Peter Galli has been a financial/technology reporter for 12 years at leading publications in South Africa, the UK and the US. He has been Investment Editor of South Africa's Business Day Newspaper, the sister publication of the Financial Times of London.

He was also Group Financial Communications Manager for First National Bank, the second largest banking group in South Africa before moving on to become Executive News Editor of Business Report, the largest daily financial newspaper in South Africa, owned by the global Independent Newspapers group.

He was responsible for a national reporting team of 20 based in four bureaus. He also edited and contributed to its weekly technology page, and launched a financial and technology radio service supplying daily news bulletins to the national broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which were then distributed to some 50 radio stations across the country.

He was then transferred to San Francisco as Business Report's U.S. Correspondent to cover Silicon Valley, trade and finance between the US, Europe and emerging markets like South Africa. After serving that role for more than two years, he joined eWeek as a Senior Editor, covering software platforms in August 2000.

He has comprehensively covered Microsoft and its Windows and .Net platforms, as well as the many legal challenges it has faced. He has also focused on Sun Microsystems and its Solaris operating environment, Java and Unix offerings. He covers developments in the open source community, particularly around the Linux kernel and the effects it will have on the enterprise.

He has written extensively about new products for the Linux and Unix platforms, the development of open standards and critically looked at the potential Linux has to offer an alternative operating system and platform to Windows, .Net and Unix-based solutions like Solaris.

His interviews with senior industry executives include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Linux operating system, Sun CEO Scot McNealy, and Bill Zeitler, a senior vice president at IBM.

For numerous examples of his writing you can search under his name at the eWEEK Website at www.eweek.com.

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